July 4, 2011

4th of July and birthday festivities

hAppY4thoFJuLy!

Thanks to all who have made, and continue to make, the USA a free country.

This weekend was a busy one for us. On Sunday we had a wonderful church service in the park and then enjoyed barbecue, games, and fellowship. I love how out-going our new church is, it reminds me of the things I did as a child and I am really looking forward to this next weekend's camping trip with our life group. I'm sure I'll blog about it and post some pictures. :)

Later, after church-in-the-park, we went home to celebrate E's birthday since we had not been able to do it the previous weekend with Tom and C out of town. Our good friends also celebrated with us since we were marking their son's first birthday as well. I made cakes for both kids, so it was fun to diversify a bit and make both a "princess" cake and a "dinosaur" cake. Admittedly, it was a lot of work, but we have such wonderful friends who re-paid us with a delicious barbecued chicken dinner...complete with a spinach and strawberry salad straight from their garden. Wonderfully worth it.

E's princess cake. I used "ballerina barbie" since she had a molded top already. The cake was a 4-tier french vanilla with strawberry and butter-cream filling, and of course very pink butter-cream frosting.

Today we headed to another barbecue for 4th of July...which was hot, hot, hot. I think it got up to 96 degrees or something this afternoon. I was happy to return home to air-conditioning for a bit and then head back out at 9pm to watch the variety of fireworks across town from the park across from us. It's a fun way to see everything "from above" and yet not have to deal with hordes of people (and traffic) afterwards. :)